30 June 2015

Psalm 121, 122, 123; 1 Samuel 11:1-15; Acts 8:1-13; Luke 22:63-71

There were longstanding issues regarding Benjamin, Saul’s tribe, and the people of Jabesh-Gilead.  If you go back and read Judges 19-21 you’ll find some interesting reading.  Judges 19 bears a striking resemblance to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah but the setting is in the territory of Benjamin.  The rest of the nation rose against Benjamin and then took an oath not to provide wives for the Benjamites.  Later, in chapter 21 there was pity taken on them that they were “lacking in Israel” because of this vow.  The people took counsel together and determined that there was one group, the people of Jabesh-Gilead, who had sent no men to the council at Mizpah and it was determined to move against them and provide wives for Benjamin from that place.  They then were anathematized in the land.  Here, they cry out to those who had rejected them for aid and assistance against the Ammonites and Saul, from the tribe of Benjamin, rallies the people to their rescue.  His act on their behalf restored a part of the nation that had been cut off for its indifference to the need of Saul’s own tribe.  This day, graciousness to brothers ruled the day.  Likewise, because of the taking of wives for Benjamin from this place, there would also have been close relatives among Benjamin for these people, perhaps another motive for Saul’s action.  Did you notice here that our author separates the men from Israel and the men from Judah?

Can you imagine discovering later that the man you beat and mocked was the Son of God?  The trial is a farce, guilt has been pre-determined and the only thing to do here is determine the particular charge that will result in the public accepting His guilt.  They land on the charge of making Himself equal with God, claiming to be God’s son.  Jesus’ refusal to answer their questions isn’t based in obstinacy, but in the reality that they have evidence and testimony from a large number of sources on which they can base a decision as to His identity and they have refused to consider where the evidence in fact leads. Why would they believe if He said it directly to them? 

Jesus had told the disciples that they would be His witnesses not just in Jerusalem but in the surrounding areas and to the end of the earth.  The persecution of the new movement after the stoning of Stephen forced others, but not the apostles, to leave the city and Philip, a deacon, chose to preach the Gospel in Samaria.  Jesus, remember, had revealed Himself to the people in Samaria, the Samaritans, in John 4, the ground for preaching Him crucified and resurrected had already been prepared.  Not only did Philip preach there, there were signs of healing and demonic oppression relieved accompanying the proclamation.  In the last part of the lesson we see a man, Simon, a magician, or wonder worker who has had the people of the area in thrall with his own works, twice we are told of their amazement at his works.  Simon, however, is amazed at the works Philip is doing and comes to faith in Jesus.  These Samaritans are like the people of Jabesh-Gilead, separated brothers of Israel, it is fitting that the Gospel should come to them first after the people of Israel.  All that was required to reach them was faith enough to proclaim Him.

29 June 2015

Psalm 106:1-18; 1 Samuel 10:17-27; Acts 7:44-8:1a; Luke 22:52-62

Samuel calls a council of all the tribes of Israel and, although the Lord has told him who is to be king and he has already anointed Saul, they draw lots to see who it will be.  The people needed to own the leader and Samuel knew the sovereignty of God, that the process would turn out exactly as it should, Saul would be chosen.  When the time came to publicly accept him, however, Saul was hiding in the baggage, certainly a strange thing to do, but Saul would indeed do some strange things in his life.  God had chosen a king for the people because of their sinful rejection of Him and would give them the king they asked for, a king who was eminently human and fallible.  Most acclaim Saul but some doubted that he would be up to the job.  There is an ominous tone to that final sentence of the reading, “But some worthless fellows said, ‘How can this man save us?’ And they despised him and brought him no present. But he held his peace.” 

Peter who had spoken so bravely about his faithfulness to Jesus and heard Jesus prophesy that he would deny Him three times this very night, finds himself on trial by a servant girl and a couple of men in the courtyard of the high priest.  He fails the test of faithfulness and betrays Jesus, exactly as Jesus said he would.  The rooster crowing would have been a painful reminder but Luke tells us something else was what reminded Peter, “And the Lord turned and looked at Peter.”  In the midst of his own trial by a tribunal that could and would declare Jesus guilty of a capital crime, would lead to beatings and the cross, He turned and looked at Peter.  How horrible would it be to see that face and know that He knew what had just happened, that you had failed Him utterly and believing that there would be no chance to fix this, no way to make amends, to confess your failure and to plead for forgiveness, no hope was left at all and your final memory of your life together would be this moment.

Stephen moves quickly through the period post-Moses to the building of the temple by Solomon to remind them that God’s word is clear that He doesn’t live in a temple made by human hands in spite of the tent of witness (tabernacle) and the temple being built according to His command and pattern.  His dwelling is in the heavens, earth is His footstool.  Stephen doesn’t deny the validity of the temple, but points to Jesus as transcendent, the one who was to come, and is not that one greater than any building made by human hands?  His defense is offense, convicting them of resisting the Holy Spirit and of betraying and murdering the Righteous One, their own Messiah.  In his death, Stephen is beatified, the glory of the Lord is on him and he prays the prayer Jesus prayed from the cross, forgiveness for those who are killing him.  Love perseveres, even for those who hate us, if we are in Christ.

28 June 2015

Psalm 118; 1 Samuel 10:1-16; Rom. 4:13-25; Matt. 21:23-32

Samuel’s prophetic words concerning Saul are very specific aren’t they?  First, he will meet two men by Rachel’s tomb and they will say certain things to him then he will meet three men who are carrying very specific things and one will offer him a portion and then he will meet prophets and, “Then the Spirit of the Lord will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man.”  Saul could surely have no doubt that the anointing for kingship was indeed of the Lord if all these things came to pass but what did this last word mean?  He will be turned into another man.  Saul had to have been confused about this but as he turned to leave Samuel we are told the Lord gave him another heart.  There must have been something tangible about this gift, something Saul knew had happened. Even after all these things happened, Saul was still in some disbelief, he didn’t even mention the kingship to his uncle.  It would have been strange to believe you were king under these circumstances.  Just because one man, clearly a prophet, anointed you, was it possible that this was actually the case? Have you ever had an experience where you either heard from the Lord about something or someone spoke a word to you about your life and God’s plan and are still waiting for it to happen?  Sometimes the knowledge of what is to be lags far behind the experience of it.

From whence did Jesus get the authority to do the things He was doing?  The implication is that He wasn’t taught or licensed by the leadership so where did Jesus get off doing these things like teaching in the temple and healing people.  Their failure to answer Jesus’ query in response regarding John’s ministry reveals they don’t have discernment.  They have all the evidence they need concerning the authority possessed by Jesus.  His authority is clearly from a higher source than theirs based on what He was doing in comparison with them.  The leaders failure to discern the ground of John’s ministry condemns them and favors tax collectors and prostitutes who received both John and Jesus. 

What law did Abraham have?  He had the law of circumcision but even this was preceded by the promise, it was merely the preparation to receive the promise.  The law Abraham had was the law of believing, the law of faith.  The Lord made a promise to Abraham that he would be the father of nations, that he would have countless descendants, and he believed God.  In spite of a twenty five year delay in the fulfillment of the promise, Abraham kept following God, kept believing, never chased after other gods.  Has the Lord promised something to you that you are waiting for, keep having faith, keep believing.  What He has promised, He will do.

27 June 2015

Psalm 107:33-43, 108; 1 Samuel 9:15-10:1; Acts 7:30-43; Luke 22:39-51

Samuel proved himself to be the seer/prophet right away on meeting Saul.  He invited him to a meal, told him how long he would remain with him and then gave information about the lost donkeys.  All without charging a cent for the information.  Saul was clearly taken aback at Samuel’s final words, “And for whom is all that is desirable in Israel? Is it not for you and for all your father's house?”  That was quite a statement Saul says for a man from the least family of the least of the tribes of Israel.  Saul was treated as an honored guest at the meal, given a special portion of meat that Samuel said he had set aside just for Saul.  We can be sure that all this was very mysterious to the young man.  How could food be set aside for him when they had no idea he was coming here at all and had never met this man?  As they are leaving the town, Samuel whips out a flask of oil and anoints Saul king over Israel.  This is certainly not what Saul expected when he went off in search of lost donkeys.

The disciples must have been equally confused about what was going on when they got to Olivet. Jesus kneels in prayer a short distance from them and an angel appeared there to strengthen Him as He prayed and poured out His soul to the Father in a way they had never seen.  Twice in this time Jesus told them to pray, both times for the same things, that they not enter into temptation.  What specific temptation was Jesus concerned about them facing here?  If this was indeed Passover, the tradition is that the vigil of waiting for Elijah to come and the kingdom to be established ends, and the wait will last at least another year when those present are asleep enough they can’t be easily wakened.  The time has come, the rescue has not happened, now destiny awaits in the form of Judas.  The disciples submit to the temptation to strike out and Jesus stops the defense immediately and restores, even here, the damage done to one who is there to arrest Him.

It’s interesting the little twist Stephen puts into the narrative, a true twist, but it is the place where the story needs focus, “This Moses, whom they rejected…”  Forty years earlier, Moses tried to step into the place of leadership of the people and they rejected him, “who made you ruler and judge over us?”  Who else was rejected as leader over Israel?  Jesus.  This Moses prophesied about Jesus and Stephen slips that in to the story too, “This is the Moses who said to the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.’”  Even after all Moses had done, when he lingered on the mountain too long the people got impatient and made Aaron their leader to do their bidding in the episode of the calf.  He’s saying, you brag about Moses as though the nation had always followed him and that is a ridiculous claim, our fathers turned away from Moses again and again, don’t tell me about the devotion to Moses.  Stephen’s defense is now becoming clear, and the next part will get to the point.  His defense is going to turn offensive and that is never welcome is it?

26 June 2015

Psalm 102; 1 Samuel 9:1-14; Acts 7:17-29; Luke 22:31-38

God chose the most stereotypical person to be the first king. Of Saul we are told, “There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he. From his shoulders upward he was taller than any of the people.”  He was literally the tall, good looking guy from a wealthy family.  He is a responsible young man, the one his father sent out to look for lost donkeys but he was also one who cared about his father, worrying that he had been gone so long his father would be worried more about his absence than the donkeys. He and his servant apparently thought of the man of God as more a fortune teller than a prophet, they presumed he would give information concerning the whereabouts of lost donkeys for money. 

The times they are a’changing.  Peter believes he is ready to stand with Jesus even if all the others leave him but Jesus knows better, Peter’s faith, the rock, will fail him in this hour of need.  He tells them that up to now they have seen the blessedness of God in their lives and in their work but that is soon going to be very different.  I don’t believe that Jesus meant to suggest they needed swords for the next season of the journey, only using that as a device to point to the danger they would all face.  We can be relatively certain that this was not intended as instruction because not a single one of these men or anyone else we see persecuted or martyred in the New Testament or the early church went down fighting.  The disciples, following a pattern that is well-established for them, misunderstand Jesus’ meaning. 

The history lesson continues.  You have to believe that the leaders here were quite impatient with the impertinence of Stephen in reciting this history to them who were the teachers of Israel.  It seems more like an oral examination answer than a response or defense to the charges proffered against him doesn’t it? Stephen is establishing his bona fides in believing the Bible. He isn’t doing revisionist history and his words are clearly an affirmation of his belief in all that they themselves believe.  The history of God’s work with His people is complicated and the complicating factor is us, our sinful desires and schemes.  We live in a world that no longer has any idea of right and wrong, good and evil, and for that reason it is a complicated world.  We need to recognize that and we need also then to recognize that we have only to follow Him to get to our destination, no one else.

25 June 2015

Psalm 105:1-22; 1 Samuel 8:1-22; Acts 6:15-7:16; Luke 22:24-30

Rarely does God say to anyone, “obey the voice” of another.  He told Abraham to obey the voice of Sarah with respect to the sending away of Hagar and Ishmael but you don’t see that often.  Normally, the only voice He commands us to obey is His voice.  In this matter of a king, Samuel objects to the people’s demand but the Lord tells him to “obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you…”  In doing so, Samuel will be obedient to the voice of the Lord.  Samuel had some blame in this whole episode.  He, like Eli before him, had failed with his own children, failed to ensure that they kept to the ways of God, and this failure led the people to desire a king, the judges weren’t trustworthy.  Why anyone thought a king would be the solution is a mystery but at least it had the promise of making it all simpler.  The Lord was clear, however, what kind of king they would have.  His greed would be rapacious, the people would be his subjects, with whom he could do as he pleased, and he would take all the best for himself.  How in the world, after that warning, could they have said, yes, but give us a king.  The rejection of God couldn’t be more evident.

Jesus knew that once He was gone the people would look to the apostles for leadership and teaching.  He also knew that they needed to understand how to exercise those ministries properly.  He spoke of how kings of other nations, the Gentiles, exercised authority in their kingship and said, it isn’t to be like that with you.  If you would be truly great, be one who serves.  We have made a great many mistakes in leadership in the church down the centuries and even in the church today we remove leaders from roles of service, even in churches that are non-hierarchical.  I am more convicted every day that we create false separations between clergy and laity that will fail to exist in eternity.  We have to learn to relate as co-laborers and brothers and sisters whatever roles we may have in the church.  Jesus called them brothers and not servants, we should learn from His example.

Did the leaders need a history lesson from Stephen?  Why in the world did he answer them in this way?  It helps to go back and remember the charges laid against him.  “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” “This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.”  Setting the record straight, defense, then, requires affirmation of all that has gone before.  His narrative points somewhere, he begins in the beginning and tells the story, emphasizing that what he is going to say is in continuity with the history of Israel, it is not disconnected.  We need to understand that continuity as well. The incarnation wasn’t just in space and time, it was in a particular place and a particular time.  Their ancestors, beginning with the patriarchs as Stephen points out, have always rejected the rightful leaders, men like Joseph.  Let us be leaders like Jesus and let us only accept as our leaders men like Jesus.

24 June 2015

Psalm 101, 109; 1 Samuel 7:2-17; Acts 6:1-15; Luke 22:14-23

Clearly, there was something wrong in Israel that the ark remained at Kiriath-jearim for twenty years.  Had the Lord said this was His chosen place of worship?  Apparently there was no understanding of the word of God and no particular desire for true worship.  It seems that after twenty years the people began longing for the old religion.  Samuel was very clear, if you want the old, true religion you have to get rid of everything else, and they did.  Just as the people are re-consecrating themselves and renewing the covenant at Mizpah, the Philistines hear of this gathering and decide now is the time to destroy the nation completely.  The people fear, Samuel offers prayer and sacrifice and the Lord fights for them and puts the Philistines to flight.  Just when the Philistines thought they had total victory, they lost everything for the duration of Samuel’s reign as judge.  The timing of the nation’s return to monotheism and the worship of Yahweh was perfect.

This had to be an incredibly confusing evening for the disciples.  Jesus says, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”  What can He possibly mean by saying any of that?  It starts out sounding like it is a wonderful thing, I earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you… The last three words, “before I suffer” don’t fit where anyone thought this was headed.  When Jesus reinterprets the Passover symbols of bread and wine to mean His body and blood and then says His betrayer is at this very table, no one could possibly have imagined what was going to happen in the next few hours, beginning very soon.  We never know what an action will bring in results and sometimes we try and determine the meaning of things before all the data is in to evaluate.  We need to be patient, even when things are going badly, in reacting to events.

What were the qualifications for the first deacons?  They were to choose “men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom” whose role was to serve tables, to ensure equitable distribution among Jews and non-Jews alike.  What was Stephen doing?  He was doing two things: great wonders and signs among the people and speaking with great wisdom.  No one, no matter what their “job” in the kingdom, should do that job only and neglect the study and sharing of the Word of God.  The role for which Stephen was “ordained” had nothing at all to do with preaching, he was, in fact, ordained so that others could tend to that work, but we all have a responsibility for sharing the Good News.  The leaders were jealous of this new man, not one of the apostles, and they quickly determined to cook up charges against him since they had no luck doing so with the apostles.  This will be a severe test for the nascent church.

23 June 2015

Psalm 97, 99; 1 Samuel 6:1-16; Acts 5:27-42; Luke 21:37-22:13

The “priests” of the Philistines are asked what to do about this ark of the Lord. Their advice is to send it back to where it belongs with guilt offerings also, golden images of tumors and mice (the mice represent the lords of the people) and set it off on a cart pulled by two milk cows along the road.  If the cows take the road towards Israelite territory then they will know it was Israel’s God who caused these plagues as He had done in Egypt, if, however, the cows took the other fork, it would signify that these were merely coincidences, either way that ark would be gone.  Wouldn’t you love to go back in time and be there when the cows came to Beth-shemesh and the people there opened the box with the tumors and mice in it?  They must have been quite puzzled about that.  Mostly though, they were glad to have the ark back, the Lord was among them again.

The man who hosted Jesus and the disciples (Isn’t it interesting that in these last days of Jesus we are told of Zacchaeus in Jericho and blind Bartimaeus but we have no idea what the names of the men who supplied the donkey for the entrance and this host?) had to believe he had won the lottery.  After the triumphal entry, the anticipation must have been overwhelming leading up to the feast.  Jesus was teaching in the temple each day, the crowds surely increasing every day, the entire city buzzing with questions, opinions, and hope that this would be the Passover when it all came together, that God truly returned in glory to Jerusalem.  Was this Messiah? When would He take the throne, the city had already welcomed Him as its savior?  At the center of it all though was the leadership who hated Jesus and who people surely knew wanted to ruin Him by any means possible.  Judas knew it, he knew that they would be happy and pay handsomely for betrayal, he knew of a time when there would be no crowds to object to their activities, he knew where to go.  This man, the host of what would be the Last Supper, he had to have been incredibly honored to be chosen.  Who knew that hosting this dinner would become such a painful thing?

The council reminds the apostles they have been told not to preach in “this Name” (notice they don’t say the Name) and yet they have done exactly that, “filling Jerusalem with this teaching.”  The irony of their statement continues with “you intend to bring this man's blood upon us.”  Indeed, that would be their salvation and their forgiveness, not their guilt.  The resurrection and the Holy Spirit changed Peter from the man who denied Jesus to the servant of the high priest to a man that preached Jesus to the high priest himself.  The man of fear was changed to a man of true faith.  Ultimately, it is decided based on Gamaliel’s word that, like the Philistines with the ark, the best thing to do is to let them go and see what happens next.  If this is God’s doing, well, we were horribly wrong and couldn’t stop it anyway and if not, it will go away in due time.  For good measure, however, they added a beating but this only caused the apostles to rejoice that they were counted worthy of suffering for the Name.  There was no way to win for the council.  Is our attitude towards suffering the same as the apostles?

22 June 2015

Psalm 89:1-18; 1 Samuel 5:1-12; Acts 5:12-26; Luke 21:29-36

The Philistines didn’t know what to make of the ark of the covenant.  Generally, when one nation vanquished another they took the idols of that nation’s gods and set them in the temple of their own god to show the inferiority of the conquered nations’ god or gods.  The ark would hardly have served as an idol but the Israelites bringing it to the battle likely caused the Philistines to believe it was an idol, that was how the Israelites treated it.  The first night it was there the Philistines own idol to their god, Dagon, was toppled and found in a worshipful position before the ark, lying face down.  The second night, the hands and feet of the idol were broken off.  Armies of the time typically cut off the hands and feet of their foes as part of their conquest.  The message was clear, the army of Israel may have been defeated but their God had not.  The people of Ashdod couldn’t wait to get rid of the ark so they sent it to another Philistine town, Gath, home of Goliath, where its arrival brought on tumors to the men of the town who then want to get rid of this pestilence as well.  The next town wants no part of it at all.  There is power in that ark against unrighteous people.

Stay awake at all times is poor health advice but it is sound advice for us as far as preparation for the end of days.  Staying awake is contrasted here with drunkenness and dissipation.  Sometimes the idea of drunkenness is used in the Bible not solely in regards to excess alcohol consumption but with being drunk on the pleasures of this life.  I think we need to examine ourselves and see where we are drunk with the pleasures or diversions of this life.  Do we know more about movies, sports, politics, other things that we do about either the Word of God or what the Spirit is doing and saying?  We spend our time in pursuit of pleasure rather than eternal things and in that way we are guilty of drunkenness and dissipation.  We are, indeed, amusing ourselves to death.

In these early days of the church it looks for all the world like it did when Jesus was alive.  Remember in Capernaum early in Jesus’ ministry and also other times when people were bringing the sick and the demon possessed to Him in droves to be healed?  As word got round that the apostles were also able to do signs and wonders as Jesus had done, it happened again, people were desperate and hopeful to see if they could heal their loved ones as well.  Predictably, the chief priests sought to rid themselves of this pestilence as the Philistines did the ark.  Their jealousy over these men caused them to attempt to put them in jail but the power of God isn’t hindered by jail cells any more than it is hindered by being in the temple of a foreign god. He breaks out.

21 June 2015

Psalm 66, 67; 1 Samuel 4:12-22; James 1:1-18; Matt. 19:23-30

Can you imagine your mother naming you “Ichabod”?  The daughter-in-law of Eli, on learning that her husband and his father both had died that day and that the ark of God had been captured by the Philistines, gave birth and named her child Ichabod because the glory of the Lord had departed from Israel in these events.  Had it?  Certainly, the ark was the greater loss and who knew what its loss portended for the nation.  It should never have been sent to the battle in the first place, in the ridiculous belief that its presence in a place mattered when the Lord had already proven Himself to be more than a local god.  The deaths of Eli and his sons had long been foretold and their misdeeds well known, so their loss was certainly not significant on anything other than a personal level.  Who could have known at the time that the rise of Samuel would lead to the glory returning to the nation, not its departure?  Sometimes we have to look beyond what we can see and trust the Lord that He is actually working for His glory when it seems all is lost.

The disciples believed in a version of the prosperity Gospel.  Prosperity was a mark of God’s favor and that was a biblical understanding, certainly something that could be inferred.  If there were no way to make the narrative fit that belief it would have died out long ago, but there are many places in Scripture where the Lord promises blessing to His people who are righteous.  Jesus has just shown with the rich young man that he may want to inherit the kingdom of God but his desire was for earth, he was unable to walk away from his earthly inheritance to receive a heavenly one.  The kingdom of God must be all for us, not simply an add on to what we already have.  For the rich to be excluded from heaven would have been a scandalous idea to the religious people of the day.  Jesus doesn’t say it is impossible for the rich to enter, only that it is very difficult, impossible for us but nothing is impossible for Him.

James sees something about wealth as well, “So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits.”  What matters most is what we are pursuing.  Here, James counsels his readers to seek to be steadfast and to seek wisdom from the Lord.  Trials will come, they are for our benefit to train us to trust and remain in Him.  We tend to get angry when trials come our way, to rebuke them, ascribe them to satan, and yet James seems to believe that trials aren’t always of satan, sometimes they are for our building up.  It may feel like we are being torn down but sometimes trials simply expose our desires are misordered.  We can be like the daughter-in-law of Eli and believe wrong things because of our attachments to the way things are.

20 June 2015

Psalm 87, 90; 1 Samuel 4:1b-11; Acts 4:32-5:11; Luke 21:20-28

What were the people thinking to send for the ark and have it brought to the battlefield?  It would seem that they considered it to be some magical talisman or good luck charm that would bring victory over the Philistines.  They were treating it in more or less the Philistines themselves understood it. The people’s understanding was no better than the pagans and that would be directly attributable to the failure of the leadership, Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas.  When the leaders of God’s people no longer truly serve Him, when they treat lightly the things of God and fail to take His Word seriously in their own lives, they teach the people not worship but simply religion.  No wonder the Lord did not fight for Israel this day, they were no better than the pagans around them.

Some of the people who heard Jesus’ prophecy concerning the fall of Jerusalem surely lived to see it as it was only a few decades later that this came to pass and temple was destroyed.  It had become like the ark in Samuel’s day, a talisman rather than a place of true worship and the proof was the crucifixion of Jesus, the rejection of God’s way in preference for man’s way, even if they thought their way was God’s way.  Those who did see the fulfilment of this prophecy could never have imagined that “the time of the Gentiles” was going to last two millennia.  The early church believed in the imminent return of Jesus and lived accordingly, not accommodated to the world but in anticipation of the judgment of the world.  We have spent an incredible amount of money consuming end times information and media but has it resulted in a mentality towards morality and ethics in the church similar to the early church?  We aren’t transformed by the idea of final judgment, merely titillated by it.

Ananias and Sapphira wanted the glory of being generous without actually paying the price for being generous.  They had every right to the proceeds of the sale of their property, no one demanded they give all the money to the church.  They, however, had seen others giving sacrificially and probably heard others speaking of these in glowing terms and they decided they wanted their own names to be buzzed about as generous givers but they didn’t want to sacrifice that much.  Peter confronts the deception but how did he know?  He never reveals the source of his information.  Fear fell on the church as a result of this situation and the couple gained not fame but infamy, their names will always be part of the church’s story.  Unfortunately, we are too often identified in the evangelical world by bad actors and the quiet saints of the church are forgotten and not celebrated.  Jesus says we are to rejoice because our names are written in heaven.  Let us do all things for the love and glory of God, not for our own name’s sake, and let us have faith and fear, not empty practice.

19 June 2015

Psalm 88; 1 Samuel 3:1-21; Acts 2:37-47; Luke 21:5-19

It seems unfair that in a time when “the word of the Lord was rare in those days; there was no frequent vision”, that the Lord should speak such a difficult word to a boy who was simply serving in the temple.  Samuel had no idea it was the Lord speaking to him, he was prepared to serve his master, Eli, to whom his mother had entrusted him as soon as he was weaned. In the night he heard a voice calling and presumed it was Eli.  Only after three times did the priest recognize this as the Lord speaking to the boy, not some dream.  The first thing this boy hears from the Lord is a hard word against his master.  Often the test of a prophet comes in this way, not platitudes but judgment.  Will the prophet be loyal to God or to man?  Samuel didn’t want to deliver this word but he had to be truthful and trustworthy.  He passed the test.  Eli knew it was coming, he had heard it too. One wonders if he took any action to discipline his own sons after the Lord spoke to him.

Jesus prophesies concerning the end times, that the temple will be torn down and that there will be great natural disasters and signs in the heavens of the impending doom of the earth and its inhabitants.  No one could, from these words, determine if we are in the “end times” because there always wars, disasters and heavenly signs.  The important thing is not these signs but the prophecy concerning the persecution of Christians for their faith.  He says we will be hated for His Name’s sake.  In Germany, the prevailing sentiment in the late 1930s and early 1940s was against the Jews and many Christians failed to stand against society in this matter and were hated and despised.  Today, what Christians are hated for the Name of Jesus?  Those who stand against the prevailing moral sentiment.  It is always the case that societal norms and mores are in opposition to God’s, that is called sin and rebellion against God.  A church that is approved by society is possibly a church no longer standing against society, no longer a prophetic voice.

Remember the sermon from Pentecost we read yesterday?  Peter called out the people as having crucified God’s Messiah.  Here, we get the response, “Brothers, what shall we do?”  Peter could have soft-pedalled the message and not been so critical, but what was at stake, the salvation of their souls, was too important an issue not to be truthful and straightforward about.  The truly prophetic voices tell the truth, that sin creates an unbridgeable gulf between man and God that can only be spanned by the cross.  Grace and truth are inseparable from one another and when we forget that and focus only on acceptance and love we fail to preach the Gospel at all.  There is no such thing as cheap grace, grace without sin, because it is then no longer grace at all.  Grace is grace because sin and the consequence of sin are matters of eternal import.  Whether that sin is avarice, greed, hatred, sexual, or some other thing, we can’t have grace without telling the truth about sin.

18 June 2015

Psalm 34; 1 Samuel 2:27-36; Acts 2:22-36; Luke 20:41-21:4

Eli was accused of “honor(ing) your sons above me.”  That is indeed a grievous accusation and I wonder if we aren’t quite regularly guilty of similar things.  What do we truly honor?  Can we say that there is nothing we honor more than the Lord?  Whatever keeps us from completely honoring Him, whatever keeps us occupied and whatever we spend our money on rather than giving the tithe is something we honor more than we honor Him.  When Paul wrote Timothy about the requirements for elders he found it important that such a one would have a household that honored the Lord, did not bring disrepute on His name.  Leadership in the kingdom means setting an example in all we do and not only for leaders but for all who would take the name of Christ and become His disciples.  We cannot take the name for the sake of vanity, we must take it in order to glorify Him.  Discipleship and discipline go hand in hand.  We take a yoke of discipline, a rule of living, that sets us apart in all we think, say and do.  Eli’s sons brought disrepute on the Lord they served and Eli’s failure to discipline them was equally egregious. 

In Jewish thought, an elder could never refer to one who comes after him, a descendant, as lord.  The one who precedes is greater and, therefore, lord over the one born later.  David writes, in the Psalm Jesus quotes, as a prophet, and refers to the one who will later rule as “my lord”.  Jesus says this proves that this one is before David because of the way David refers to him here.  Again, Jesus rebukes the leaders of the people for their failure to actually lead.  They use their offices not to glorify the Lord but to have honor and glory for themselves.  For a long season in our history, such was the case for those who served in the church, we received honor in the world and recognition of a special status.  The times they are a changing and I believe that is a good thing altogether.  When we strip out the honor of leadership, it can be one place where pride cannot hide; although it lurks in pride in suffering for Christ’s sake as well as in honor.  The one person in the reading who could take pride is the widow and there is no chance she would do so, she gave up pride for faith.

Can you imagine how you would feel if you had been one of those shouting “Crucify Him!” on Good Friday and then heard Peter preach, “this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.”  They had killed God’s chosen Messiah, the one they were all waiting for, the one whom David, who was not raised from the dead but whose grave was still there, had prophesied would arise.  They were personally and inescapably guilty of rejecting the Messiah.  Was there any way to recover from such an error?  To believe this message would be to overthrow everything you thought and everything you had ever believed.  Mostly it would be the overthrow of your pride. To receive Jesus is to receive grace, there is no room for pride.

17 June 2015

Psalm 119:97-120; 1 Samuel 2:12-26; Acts 2:1-21; Luke 20:27-40

Eli’s sons are priests and yet they care nothing for the Lord.  Their actions regarding the sacrifice and the priests’ portion of it are completely out of accord with the Word of God.  For some sacrifices, the priests were allotted specific portions and the rest was consumed in the fire.  The fat portions of all sacrifices were considered the “best” and belonged entirely to the Lord.  Their lack of concern and reverence for both the altar and the Word caused the people to treat the worship of God with contempt.  Priests and pastors have a heavy responsibility as leaders and models.  These men also were having sex with the women who served at the entrance to the tent of meeting.  Who used the tent of meeting at this time and why were there women serving at the entrance?  Eli was hearing gossip but all he heard was what he should have seen for himself.  His attentiveness to Hannah when she prayed and his rebuke of her at the time belie the fact that he wasn’t paying attention to what was going on right under his nose.  All the while, Samuel pops up in the narrative as a boy serving diligently under Eli’s direction and, interestingly, we are told, “the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and also with man.”  That’s exactly what Luke says of Jesus in Luke 2.

The marrying of a childless widow by a family member of the deceased was considered an act of greatest kindness in Israel.  The one who married such a woman did so in order that she might bear children on behalf of the one who died.  The progeny of such a marriage was considered to be the child of the deceased, continuing his name.  The Sadducees choice of this particular example was to say that the entire line had ceased and surely these men all deserved to be resurrected as they continued to marry this woman who was surely cursed of God as she was not only barren but also, seemingly a killer of husbands.  Jesus proves the resurrection by referring the episode of the burning bush and God’s self-identification of Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by using the present tense verb, I am the God of…  We will not be married because there will be no need of marriage as the institution within which procreation occurs since there will be no procreation in eternity.  We will be “like” angels in this regard, not in form.

God is a promise-keeping God.  The Lord had spoken through the prophet Joel concerning what it would look like when He poured out His Spirit in the last days and Peter immediately seizes on this word to explain what is going on at Pentecost.  Pentecost, or Shavuot, was a harvest festival and it also is a time when the Jews celebrate the giving of the Law at Sinai.  Remember, on the mountain, there was fire and smoke, the people saw what Moses had seen in the burning bush at this same mountain writ larger than life.  Here divided tongues of fire appeared and rested on them and yet the flames did not consume those on whom the Spirit rested (recall the dove “rested” on Jesus at His baptism).  The Lord was faithful to His promise and here the disciples are now confirmed in their witness by the testimony of tongues, both of fire and proclamation.  They began this day to grow in stature and favor with the Lord and with man. 

16 June 2015

Psalm 78:1-39; 1 Samuel 1:21-2:11; Acts 1:15-26; Luke 20:19-26

Hannah kept her vow. After her child was weaned she took him up to the temple and offered him to the Lord to serve there with the priest, Eli.  She was vindicated.  Her desire was simply to have the stain removed from her life, the stain of barrenness which suggested there was something wrong with her, that she was unacceptable to the Lord.  He had answered her prayer and her response to that answer was praise and boy, did she know how to praise the Lord.  Her praise is based in His sovereignty and Her vindication, justice delayed was not justice denied.  Are we as effusive in our praise as we are bitter in our anguish?  There should be a correspondence between the two.  Our thankfulness should be analogous to our complaints. It is difficult for us, in a society that doesn’t value child bearing in the same way, to understand fully the implications of barrenness of this time.  Hannah’s prayer should help us to empathize with her former plight and guide us in our own thankfulness when our situation is reversed.

What are the “the things that are God's”?  The answer can be found in the way Jesus approaches the question of taxation.  When Jesus holds up the denarius He asks a simple question, “Whose likeness and inscription does it have?” That question then gives us the answer to what is God’s, that which bears His likeness and inscription.  The coin had the image of Caesar upon it and in the same way, our lives are owed to the one whose image we bear.  The goal of these hypocrites, people who seem one way but are actually another, was to have Jesus arrested by the civil authorities for speaking against Caesar and civic responsibility.  They were prompted by yesterday’s parable, the one about the wicked tenants.  If we apply that parable to this situation we see that they were more prepared to pay tribute to Caesar than the one who owned the vineyard, they condemn themselves according to the parable in this action.

I suppose Matthias was likely a very good man and a lover of Jesus.  He was there from beginning to end, from the baptism of Jesus by John to the ascension.  He hadn’t been chosen by Jesus as one of the twelve but he was, nonetheless, present for all Jesus’ major life events, including, we presume, a witness to the resurrected Jesus as well.  Now, he is chosen to be one of the apostles, first as a nominee and then by the lot falling on him.  What a day in his life this had to have been!  Afterwards, Scripture is completely silent as to what became of the man, just as it is with Hannah.  Paul seems to have been the man chosen by God to fill out the full complement of apostles, representing people like us, born out of time, not eyewitnesses to any of the events of Jesus’ life but whose faith is no less complete than those who did.  Our shame too, like Hannah’s, has been taken away and God has done something sovereign in our salvation for which it is appropriate to give Him effusive praise.

15 June 2015

Psalm 80; 1 Samuel 1:1-20; Acts 1:1-14; Luke 20:9-19

There was a time when men were allowed to have two wives in Israel under a very specific set of circumstances.  If their wife was unable to have children after a certain number of years, they were allowed to take a second wife for that purpose.  This was based on the commandment to be fruitful and multiply and the need to keep that commandment.  (It is also a misogynistic precept you won’t find in the law anywhere.)  The practice is never commended and, in fact, is condemned as a practice of kings.  Here, it seems that the man truly loved his barren wife, Hannah, and favored her by giving her a double portion of the sacrifice as though she had a child.  Her “rival wife” used to provoke her, can’t you hear her sarcastic comments on her own blessedness?  One has to wonder if the provocation wasn’t caused by Elkanah’s love for Hannah. It is ironic that Eli paid such close attention to her in the temple when his own sons, who were priests, were acting badly and defiling the temple and defaming the Lord by their actions.  Hannah’s prayer came from a deep place, seeking justice not blessing alone.  Her prayer was answered, and the Lord essentially had a son for Himself based on Hannah’s vow.  (As a side note, Hannah wasn’t bound by her vow, Elkanah could have canceled it based on the law.) 

If the parable Jesus tells were an actual story, a man planted a vineyard and let it out to tenants who refused to pay the rents owed on it, beating the men sent to collect what was due and payable until, ultimately, the man sent his son and heir who the men decided to kill, what would anyone have expected the owner to do?  The story would end more or less as it does end, “He will come and destroy those tenants and give the vineyard to others.”  Would anyone argue that this would be the end of the story or that the owner should do otherwise?  Of course not, but what was the reaction of those who heard the parable?  “Surely not!”  Why?  The ending isn’t a surprise, there was no plot twist, the story ended exactly the way they would have expected it to end.  The problem is, they saw the meaning of the parable, they knew it referred to the nation.  They couldn’t imagine God would do such a thing, they had a covenant that said He wouldn’t.

Something new is on the horizon and no one could have imagined what was actually going to happen in fulfillment of Jesus’ words, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.”  Whatever they may have imagined it was not the explosion of the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost and thereafter, to this day.  The Holy Spirit is responsible for the church’s existence for the last two thousand years.  If God didn’t give His Spirit there would be no believers after this first generation.  The perseverance of the church, not to mention the fact that it exists nearly all over the world and continues to grow to this day, is a witness and result of the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise.  We have a part to play in that great story by being witnesses today and it should be the joy of our lives to participate and take our part, just like Hannah.

14 June 2015

Psalm 93, 96; Ecclus. 46:11-20; Rev. 15:1-8; Matt. 18:1-14

The writer skims over the period of the judges, remembering there were a few good ones along the way who had particular names but doesn’t mention those names, only hoping that they will be remembered among their children.  Then, he lands on Samuel, the last judge, the first anointer of kings over Israel, albeit reluctantly.  He is like John the Baptist in many ways, from his birth narrative to his role in history.  He is a transitional figure and he anointed the one from whom Messiah would come.  He ushered in a new age in the history of God’s people because the people no longer wanted judges, they wanted kings like the nations around them.  From the first time Samuel heard the word of the Lord to the episode when Saul sought a medium for insight and Samuel’s ghost showed up to rebuke the king, Samuel was a man who fought the fight, sided with God and did what he was told, whether it made any sense to him or not.

Innocence, what a concept.  We are exposed to so much sin, so much degradation, that we fail even to see its effect on our lives any longer.  Our kids are exposed via the various outlets like television, movies, the internet, etc. that we lose our innocence very early now.  Jesus takes a child as His example of achieving greatness in the kingdom, in much the same way He said to Nicodemus that we must be born again, to be new creations.  Jesus is incredibly clear here on how important it is to deal with sin in our lives, rooting it out wherever we find it, being ruthless about ridding it from our lives.  At the end of the day, we recognize that if we chopped off our hands and feet and cut out our eyes, we would still have a problem with sin, our hearts.  What we need are new hearts, and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, that is possible.  Sometimes we have so much company in our sin we don’t realize we’re lost again.

The angels of judgment come forth from the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven.  They have not been revealed until this time, the time of judgment, and they bear seven bowls of God’s wrath.  What a fearsome sight this must have been for John.  Who could possibly blame Him? We need to repent, fall on our faces and ask the Lord to forgive what we have made of this nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.  We need to ask forgiveness for tolerating every manner of evil and of participating in so much of it.  We, the church, have lost our way and we need a shepherd.  We need revival.  We need men like Samuel, who will tell the truth about the world and about us, who will call us to repent, who will show us the way.  We have lost our innocence and we need to be like children, seeking innocence, if we are to be restored. 

13 June 2015

Psalm 75, 76; Ecclus. 46:1-10; 2 Cor. 13:1-14; Luke 20:1-8

The author sings the praises of Joshua and of Caleb.  These two men stood against the entire nation in the episode of the spies who came back with a good report of the land itself but who discouraged Israel from going up to take the land for fear of the people there.  Joshua had a difficult task, to follow in the footsteps of Moses.  Not many men could do that as well as Joshua.  All he had to do was follow in the footsteps of God, to go where He led and to be bold in advancing into the land.  He had to have faith.  All those years at the right hand of Moses in the wilderness taught Joshua the way to lead God’s people was to listen to God and believe that what He had promised would be fulfilled, no matter the obstacle.  “He called upon the Most High, the Mighty One, when enemies pressed him on every side, and the great Lord answered him with hailstones of mighty power.”

The leaders are aware that they are not in step with the people but sometimes the arrogance of leadership allows you to simply discount the people.  Sometimes it is the job of a leader to discern in such a way as to be out of step with the people, to see things in truth when all about you are being deceived, to not run after the latest fad.  Sometimes that causes you to miss a movement of God.  In the case of Jesus, there was simply too much to overlook to discern the truth.  The signs and wonders, the teaching with authority noted in Capernaum from the beginning of His public ministry, the prophetic words of Simeon and Anna in the temple, all the fulfillment of the Messianic prophecy, all these things should have validated Jesus in their eyes.  Their issue all along was who had given Jesus the authority to do what He was doing.  Was that authority from God or Beelzebul?  In this case, had some priest given permission for Jesus to teach in the temple or had He presumed to this work? 

Paul’s desire is to stir the people to repentance by his letter that he may find a people prepared for his visit in such a way that they greet him with gladness and he not have to judge them harshly.  Does that message sound familiar?  It should, it is the message of John the Baptist and it is the message Jesus gave in many parables about His return.  Paul believed that one of his jobs vis a vis the church was to speak the truth about sin in the body, that it was important for leaders to be clear about sin.  His goal was always plain, the sanctification of believers and the body itself.  If we know we have cancer in our bodies the only rational response is to deal with it or it will ultimately kill the body by taking away its ability to produce healthy cells.  When leaders fail to act on cancer, in the form of sin or false doctrine, ultimately the body will die.  By whose authority do we act in this way, by God’s authority, not man’s.  I have certainly been asked this question in ministry by men who thought they were ultimately the ones who can give such authority as leaders in the church.  They were wrong, the pastor’s authority never comes from man.

12 June 2015

Psalm 69; Ecclus. 45:6-16; 2 Cor. 12:11-21; Luke 19:41-48

 

The Lord chose Aaron to serve as a priest forever.  That alone tells us nearly everything we need to know about grace doesn’t it?  Aaron, the priest who made the golden calves as his brother Moses was on the mountain with God and built an altar before it.  Aaron, the man who came to Moses with his sister Miriam and said, “Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses? Has he not spoken through us also?”  Aaron, the man whose sons, also priests, in the very next chapter after fire from the Lord had come and consumed the initial sacrifices on the brazen altar, brought strange fire to add to the Lord’s fire and the fire from Lord came and consumed them as it had consumed the burnt offering.  That the Lord chose Aaron and didn’t reject him after all these things is a testimony to two things, the Lord’s election being irrevocable and that His grace is the basis of the priesthood.  Haughtiness and self-righteousness have no place among the leaders of God’s people.

Jesus comes into town on a donkey, a symbol of peace, to the acclaim of Messiah and says,
“Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!”  What are the things that make for peace?  What they really wanted was someone to overthrow the Romans and bring peace.  Their idea of peace was too small and their methods were still of war, still based in us v them.  What Jesus is interested in is a greater peace, bridging all the gaps, man v man, Jew v Gentile, and, most importantly, image bearers v the God whose image they bear.  The Gospel is a story of peace and yet we are too often at war still, war between one faction or another in Christianity and war between the church and the world (same as Jew v Gentile).  Jesus prayed for unity and we continue to practice division over things like which version of Scripture, what kind of music, liturgy or not, old liturgy or new liturgy, denominational pride, there is actually no end of the ways we can divide.  Jesus made peace with God on our behalf on the cross and then called us to take up our own and follow.  We make a practice of putting others on the cross.

In making his own case, Paul isn’t actually denigrating these “super apostles.”  He is saying that in no way is he inferior to them.  He is fighting for his own rights as an apostle.  The signs of a true apostle, the power of the Spirit, were displayed among the Corinthians in Paul’s ministry there and the only way in which he differs from these others is that he wasn’t a financial burden to them and for this he saves his supreme sarcasm, “Forgive me this wrong!”  Paul is determined that he is definitely not in the wrong in this regard, he will do it the same way next time around, he will not be a burden and speaks of himself as a parent to the Corinthians, reminding them of his prior claim.  In all things, Paul is willing to pour himself out for the church.  He is willing to lay himself down for even these who have refused to repent of egregious sin.  They are more important than his glorification, the mark of a true leader in the church.

11 June 2015

Psalm 71; Ecclus. 44:19-45:5; 2 Cor. 12:1-10; Luke 19:28-40

The writer gives us a quick Jewish history lesson, a foreshortened one to be sure.  Abraham and his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob are singled out and then he skips forward past Joseph to Moses.  Abraham is where it all begins, this man’s faith and faithfulness in testing is the fount from which all else flows.  Isaac and Jacob continue the covenant and then Moses gets special praise, “He made him equal in glory to the holy ones.”  The Jewish belief is that the giving of the law was accompanied by angels (see Galatians 3.19) and that God spoke face to face with Moses was to give him glory commensurate with these “holy ones.”  Moses had a most special relationship with God, unlike anyone else at the time or otherwise.  Why does the writer believe that God chose Moses for this relationship.  “For his faithfulness and meekness he consecrated him, choosing him out of all humankind.”  Meekness isn’t a characteristic we normally associate with Moses or our leaders is it? It might be profitable for us to spend some time studying that concept biblically if we are to have a similar relationship with the Lord and if we are to properly evaluate leaders.

Jesus makes two prophecies here:  that there will be a colt that has never been ridden in the village of either Bethpage or Bethany, and that the owner will ask a question when they untie it. The first was truly prophecy, the second was dependent on the first but if the first was true, the second was predictable.  Did the owner know who “the Lord” referred to?  He must have thought it an extraordinary honor if he did.  It seems likely that the owner would have known, as Jesus and these men, the disciples, were very recently here and did the greatest miracle prior to the resurrection here in this village, the raising of Lazarus from the dead.  As Jesus approaches Jerusalem all would have known this was self-conscious fulfillment of another prophecy, the prophecy of Zechariah 9.9, “Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”  The greeting they give Jesus is the greeting of Messiah, everyone thought the time had come.  Well, except for those Pharisees who refer to Him as Teacher in asking Him to rebuke His disciples.  Are they blind?

What is Paul talking about when he writes of being taken up to the third heaven?  Well, if we look at the apocryphal book of 2 Enoch, which was never included in the official Jewish canon of Scripture but which was read by many, we see the idea of seven levels of heaven and the third in particular.  The third level is described as a garden tended and kept by 300 angels for the righteous “who endure all manner of offense from those that exasperate their souls, who avert their eyes from iniquity, and make righteous judgment, and give bread to the hungering, and cover the naked with clothing, and raise up the fallen, and help injured orphans, and who walk without fault before the face of the Lord, and serve him alone.”  Because of this vision, Paul says, he received a thorn in the flesh to keep him humble.  All three of our lessons today speak of humility as a value and yet the world we live in has little value for true humility.  Paul says that the purpose of humility is that the Lord alone be exalted.  We aren’t called to walk in our own power but in His.

10 June 2015

Psalm 72; Deut. 31:30-32:14; 2 Cor. 11:21b-33; Luke 19:11-27

Moses ends his covenant renewal speech and ceremony by singing a song to the people and to the Lord.  His song extols the virtues of the Lord, recites the history of the people in such a way as to make plain that the hero of the story is God alone.  His song also tells of the reality of anthropology, that we are the problem, not God, that He is faithful and we are fickle.  In general, we have too high an opinion of ourselves, particularly in our generations now.  We have indeed put God in the Dock as CS Lewis, we see ourselves as judge over God and we find Him guilty of overseeing a world gone wrong and doing His job badly.  We scream at Him over the injustice of this world and we never see our own culpability in it.  We know we are imperfect, sinful, self-centered, unjust and we expect more from the world than we get.  What options would He have in our system?  If He always punished injustice would we survive our childhood?  There is only one solution, a new people, a people with hearts to obey and be like Him.  Let us be the people the world needs to see.

Luke tells us why Jesus told this particular parable, “because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately.”  Who is the nobleman, Jesus, who are the citizens who hate Him, the Jewish leaders of the day. At the time, Herod, for instance, would have gone to Rome to receive the kingdom he ruled over, it was given to him by going to the foreign power who ruled.  Jesus will go to His Father to receive a kingdom.  The people here send a delegation to the ruler telling him they do not want this one to rule.  The first two servants here are allied with the nobleman, they know what sort of man he is and they risk what they have been given in his service and receive rewards commensurate with their return on his investment entrusted to them.  The third servant “knows” what sort of man this nobleman is, the exact opposite of who he has demonstrated himself to be in the treatment of the first two servants.  He is like the older brother of the parable of the Prodigal Son, he doesn’t “know” the man at all.  Knowing God is more important than any knowledge we will have.  The way we know Him will determine our attitude towards everything else.

Paul is clear that if anyone has reason for boasting it is him.  These “super-apostles” have nothing on him in any way.  It is interesting that when he says he is a better servant of Christ than they are he doesn’t mention a single accomplishment or success.  He only mentions his suffering:  labors, imprisonments, beatings with lashes, rods, and stonings, shipwrecks, adrift at sea, dangers all around, sleepless nights, hunger and thirsting, exposure, and the daily pressure of his anxiety for the churches.  Does that sound like how we evaluate “better” in our day?  He boasts in his weakness because that is where the Lord said that true strength, He, will be revealed.  Maybe, just maybe, we need to have our minds renewed if we’re to think like we are intended to think.

9 June 2015

Psalm 61, 62; Deut. 30:11-20; 2 Cor. 11:1-21a; Luke 19:1-10

Zen Buddhism uses teaching devices called koans which are short phrases that seem simple but are really very complex and require much consideration and meditation in order to sort out their meanings and implications.  Moses says that the law of God isn’t like that at all, it is simple, you don’t need teachers to go to heaven to get the meaning, you don’t need anyone to go over the sea to get the interpretation, it is in not only plain language, but in their own language.  The Bible isn’t esoteric literature, no matter how we may try and make it some sort of allegory or mystical document.  Moses is warning against incipient Gnosticism.  He surely knew it would come.  The plain meaning and words would be too unchallenging and some would arise who would feel the need to go beyond that meaning of the text in order to provide for their own preferences.  Both Judaism and Christianity have been susceptible to such teachers who would speak of the deep things rather than the plain things.  Mastery of the plain things should come first and only one has accomplished that feat. 

What did Jesus say that prompted Zacchaeus to repent and offer restitution?  We know that this “wee little man” was probably a tax collector’s tax collector.  He was likely a man who had purchased a territory from the Romans.  The collection of certain taxes was farmed out to the highest bidder who then made his profit by overcharging by overvaluing the assets that were taxed.  His percentage was fixed but his values were variable and these men were roundly despised.  Zacchaeus wanted desperately to see Jesus when He passed through Jericho and broke all social conventions by climbing a tree in order to better see Jesus.  How amazed must he and all others have been when Jesus called him down and invited Himself to dinner!  There is no mention of Jesus fussing at him about the sin of tax collection and extortion, His very presence moved Zacchaeus to repentance.  Grace, the grace of choosing him, taking the risk of public renunciation, made all the difference.  Who would have guessed such a man was ripe for change?  Jesus.  Zacchaeus took a risk, humbled himself like a child in climbing that tree, and his seeking was rewarded.

All the things Paul mentions about himself, humility, the fact that he didn’t get a salary from the church in Corinth, that he spoke simply, etc. are contrasted with ones he refers to as the super-apostles who have come in his absence.  We aren’t much different from the Corinthians, our culture has a value for self-promotion and sometimes those self-promoters lead people astray.  When we make much of men rather than Jesus, when we make celebrity pastors, we do what the Corinthians did.  We allow them to preach false Christs and false Gospels because we see an aura of success around them, they tell us what we want to hear, the secrets of success, prosperity and having it all.  Paul had no problems calling out others in ministry, speaking the truth about them, calling them “false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”  If you don’t preach the real Jesus and the real Gospel, if you preach Gnosticism or anything other than the promise of suffering as He suffered, if your preaching is devoid of any mention of sin and you preach grace without repentance, you are a false apostle in this same way.

8 June 2015

Psalm 56, 57; Deut. 30:1-10; 2 Cor. 10:1-18; Luke 18:31-43

Moses was indeed a prophet.  He knew they would forsake the covenant and he knew that God would send them into exile among the nations.  He also knew that when they were in exile they would repent, but likely not until they were in exile.  He further knew that when they did repent, the Lord would restore them to the Land.  He knew these things because he was a realist regarding man’s ability to keep covenant, man’s ability to repent before he lost it all, and God’s faithfulness and promise.  Those things simply require observation, what he has seen of the people and of God in these forty years.  What he couldn’t have guessed by observation, however, was this part of the prophecy, “And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.”  The later prophets, much later, about 1500 years later, would prophesy the same things, and in the outpouring of the Spirit, the Lord would fulfill this 2000 year old word from the first prophet of Israel, Moses.

While they knew that the Pharisees and scribes were hot to put an end to Jesus, not a single disciple could have believed Jesus’ words that He would “be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.”  They believed He was Messiah and that belief was incompatible with this prophetic word, Messiah didn’t die and he certainly didn’t die at the hands of Gentiles.  The people of Jericho probably thought the blind man was simply trying to get some money out of Jesus, the man all were hailing as He passed through on the way to Jerusalem.  His cry, “Son of David”, presaged what was going to be heard when they reached the city of God with the crowds greeting Him with that very title.  The man wanted more than money though, he wanted his sight restored and received as He asked.  A week or so later, he might have wished not to have sight at all if he saw Jesus beaten and crucified.

The accusation against Paul in Corinth was that he was two-faced, a hypocrite, acting one way when he was among them, humbly loving them, and then a different way, bold and accusatory, when he wrote them.  His plea is that he not have to be bold at all with them.  His point is that he has had to be bold because of their disobedience and tolerance of notorious sin in their midst.  What he is also writing about here is the source of this idea, those who are commending themselves, boasting among the Corinthians and attempting to hold them under their sway.  We’ll see in the next couple of readings what Paul has to say about these men, it will be dripping with sarcasm.  At the end of the day, Paul says, listen to those who boast in the Lord Jesus, not in themselves or in anyone else.  That is always solid advice.

7 June 2015

Psalm 24, 29; Deut. 29:16-29; Rev. 12:1-12; Matt. 15:29-39

How important is keeping covenant?  Moses warns the people against not only national apostasy but also the importance of each person within the nation keeping covenant.  The gist of his words here is that one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.  Why does God not deal with that one man whose heart is going or has gone astray and remove him from the nation rather than allowing his attitude and apostasy to infect the entirety.  The community is to be such that it deals with problems such as this as they arise.  Think of it as a garden and the gardener or gardeners allowing weeds to grow without removing them.  Sooner or later they take over the entire plot of ground and choke out the garden plants and ruin the garden.  Communities are intended to be closely-knit so as to know when one member begins to go astray.  That doesn’t mean all churches have to be small, only that structures need to be in place where everyone is accountable.  What is truly shameful is when denominations go astray because no one dared confront wrong teaching.

Jesus heals many on a mountain.  These people had to work to get to him, carrying those who could not walk themselves.  The people who experienced these healings gave glory to the God of Israel, they got it, they knew that Jesus healed by the power of Yahweh.  Afterwards, He had compassion on them for their perseverance in remaining with Him three days without food.  His compassion was action, he fed the four thousand with seven loaves and a few small fish that He offered up to the Father for blessing.  God’s blessing takes the little we offer in faith and makes it serve the purpose for which it was intended, whether it seems sufficient to us or not.  Here, abundance was the end result, where there were seven loaves, now those seven loaves are seven baskets full of remainder.  Some have suggested that the people had food with them and Jesus’ act of faith caused them to share.  If that is so, where did this remainder come from?

Whenever God prepares to do something new, this scene repeats itself.  We see a woman who is prepared to give birth to a child and the dragon awaiting its birth in order to destroy it at birth.  That image could apply to nearly every move of God in history.  It could apply to creation where, only three chapters into the narrative, the serpent comes to spoil everything by destroying the relationship between God and His image bearers.  All through Genesis, with Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, we see the moments when all was vulnerable and satan came to destroy.  The nation at Mt Sinai, Moses on the mountain, the rest calling for creation of gods at the moment of the national birth.  On and on it goes, all the way down to Herod attempting to destroy Israel’s king by killing the children and then, the persecution of the church all the way down to today.  Satan works on a micro scale as well, in local churches and fellowships, to keep them from becoming what God intended.  Don’t we believe in spiritual warfare?  Why don’t we pray like we do?  

6 June 2015

Psalm 55; Deut. 29:2-15; 2 Cor. 9:1-15; Luke 18:15-30

Moses sounds a bit skeptical of the people doesn’t he?  He begins by reminding them once again of all they have seen, from the exodus to now, in these forty years.  He then says that they have seen but the Lord has not yet given them hearts to understand what they have seen and heard.  They remain contentious and fractious over all things, they have failed to truly appreciate all this.  The hardships have been the thing that they have focused on, not the signs and wonders.  What will their memories of this time be, hardship and their overcoming them or the little amazing things like their clothing and sandals not wearing out.  Sometimes we need someone to remind us of the little things.  Can you see this man, after forty years in the wilderness leading these people, now facing this great multitude of natural born covenant members and those who have attached themselves to them along the way, and sharing his heart and hopes with them? It would have been an incredibly emotional thing.  As he looks at them, you hear his hopes in that last line, “It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, but with whoever is standing here with us today before the Lord our God, and with whoever is not here with us today.”  He sees as Abraham did, the permanence of the covenant down the generations yet to come, and he knows, they will come.

The rich young ruler is like the tax collector in some ways, he believes himself to be a good commandment keeper.  All that Jesus mentions, not stealing, not committing adultery, no murder, not bearing false witness, honoring mother and father, he says he has done.  The difference between the rich young ruler and the tax collector lies in knowing he has “done” what it takes to inherit the kingdom, he isn’t confident in what he has done.  Jesus says, good job, but there is one thing you lack, give everything to the poor and come follow me.  He is challenged at the level of another commandment, idolatry, and, perhaps, covetousness, and here he fails the test.  It wasn’t that he had too much to walk away from, it was that he was too attached to it to walk away.  Peter, of course, couldn’t let the moment pass without a prideful statement, we’ve done exactly what you said this man lacked, what’s in it for us?  Jesus’ response points, like Moses’ beyond what can be seen, to the age to come.  Did they yet have hearts to understand what they had seen and heard?  Not yet.

Again, Paul uses the little psychological move of urging the Corinthians to give willingly but at the same time, competitively, to prove to the Macedonians they are just as “good” as Paul has said they are.  The writer of Hebrews said, “let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” and that is Paul’s motive here, to stir up the church in Corinth to love and good works, to be an example to others.  He is teaching a principle here that can be manipulated and is, of course, manipulated today, that if we give we will also receive.  There is no principle that giving is the guarantee that God will monetarily bless us but there is a truth that if we fail to give we will not receive God’s best.  He says we will be enriched “in every way to be generous in every way.”  Their generosity will redound to the glory of God because it will be received by those in need with thanksgiving to God.  We can’t allow ourselves to fall into the trap of measuring God’s “enrichment” of our lives to money, if we do, we miss things like clothing and sandals that don’t wear out after forty years in the wilderness.  Where are we guilty of focusing our attention in such a way that we miss great signs of God’s goodness and generosity towards us?  When you look at your lack, you often miss what God is doing.

5 June 2015

Psalm 40, 54; Deut. 26:1-11; 2 Cor. 8:16-24; Luke 18:9-14

The best way to be grateful for what you have is to remember where you came from and how you got where you are today.  No one appreciates the journey like the one who made it.  If you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, worked hard and made sacrifices you can look back and appreciate all you have gained for yourself.  The story of Jews and Christians is different.  We know the truth, without Him, I am nothing.  All that I am, all that I have, is because He gave me the gifts, talents and opportunities to be this person.  Even before I knew about the cross, God had given me everything I needed.  Without the raw materials of my life what would I have?  The Jewish people, in the land, are to remember their story just as we do at Communion.  Their story is that their father was “a wandering Aramean” who wandered into Egypt, a small family of people and they found themselves slaves there until the Lord rescued and redeemed them, and has now brought them into the land He promised those fathers.  No amount of hard work would have brought them to this place, only the Lord.  Forgetting that, taking credit for it all, is a great danger to our lives.

The Pharisee, unfortunately for him, is not only self-righteous, he is a self-made man.  He has accomplished many religious things, fasting twice a week and tithing for example.  The tax collector has accomplished one thing that he will bring to the Lord, sin.  Who is justified before the Lord, the self-made man or the sinner?  Right action with wrong motivation is not even interesting, much less acceptable to the Lord.  Why has the Pharisee done the things he does?  To justify himself, to make himself acceptable to the Lord and better than the tax collector.  Those external things don’t justify him, they just make him a religious man.  When we come before the Lord we need to first discern Him before we begin touting ourselves.  If we see Him as holy, the creator of all, the judge of all, in other words, with a sense of fear, we lose our sense of self-righteousness.  When we recognize that all we are is a result of His creation of us in His image, we lose the sense of self-made”ness.”  We can now stand in humility and walk away in joy because we know grace was what we really needed.

How do we commend ourselves to others?  Paul commends Titus as having the same earnest care for the Corinthians as he himself has for them.  He was asked to go to Corinth but he wanted, in fact, earnestly wanted to go of his own accord.  He is not simply fulfilling a duty imposed on him, he desired to go before he was asked.  Three times in this reading Paul uses the word for “earnest” or “diligence” to describe Titus’ feelings towards this church.  It tells us the depth of his love for these people, that his desire to come to them is based in love and longing to be with them, not simply to come collect some money.  What is your motive for prayer and worship?  The motive of our hearts needs to always be, I once was lost, but now am found.